Report: White Supremacists Grow “Angrier & More Energetic” In 2016

At the heart of the surge, experts say, have been lone wolf attackers like Dylann Roof in the Emanuel AME shooting, writes USA Today.

Emboldened by a series of “hate crimes and the current election season,” attacks by White supremacists rose dramatically in 2015, reports USA Today.

The news comes against the backdrop of the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston by avowed White supremacist Dylann Roof.

The “massacre came during what experts described as a multi-year surge in activity among white supremacists, a surge that has continued into this year. And presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump may be fueling the fire,” writes USA Today:

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report in February 2015 — the center’s most recent available data — revealing that domestic terrorist attacks occurred, on average, once every 34 days from April 2009 and February 2015. The study included violence from people on the radical right and homegrown jihadists, often from lone wolves.

“I think we’re going to continue to see that. We’ve certainly seen a number of incidents (this year),” SPLC president Richard Cohen said, adding that Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people Sunday in an Orlando nightclub, “has all the earmarks of a lone wolf attacker.”

Lone wolf white supremacists have also often been the perpetrators in those attacks, Cohen said, such as Roof and Michael Page, the shooter who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.

Mark Pitcavage, a historian for the Anti-Defamation League, told the news outlet, “A lot of the extreme right perceives [Republican presumptive presidential nominee] Trump as being largely sympathetic to many of their views.”